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Why Human Traffickers Prey on Foster-Care Kids | City Limits

"When children feel that no one care about them, and are moved from one placement to another, craving attention and stability children can easily find themselves seduced by traffickers who initially make them feel care for, only to find themselves used for financial gain. Many children in foster care have been previously abused, putting them at further at risk. In addition, children who are placed into foster care as adolescents are automatically placed into group homes since foster parents generally are only willing to take young children. In fact, traffickers will often send one of their girls into group homes to find girls and urge them to leave by saying things like they will be well taken care of financially and have a “family” so to speak who will care for them."

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Why Human Traffickers Prey on Foster-Care Kids | City Limits:

Book Offers Strategies to Protect Foster Youth from Online Predators | The Chronicle of Social Change

“The two main times in a foster child’s life at which they are the most vulnerable to fall prey to sexual predators are when the child is undergoing puberty and when the child is aging out of foster care,” Singleton said.

Read MORE

Book Offers Strategies to Protect Foster Youth from Online Predators | The Chronicle of Social Change:

Roskam: Fighting human trafficking in the foster care system | mySuburbanLife.com

Source:  mySuburbanLife.com:

By Peter Roskam

For too many children in the foster care system, their lives have been filled with instability, abuse, and neglect. Often these children are passed from home to home not knowing how long they will stay in one place or who they can trust. The psychological toll of such an environment makes it all too easy for human trafficking rings to target vulnerable foster care youth and force them into what can only be described as modern day slavery. That is why lawmakers, community leaders and law enforcement agencies are joining forces to prevent the estimated 104,000 children in foster care from becoming victims of physical and psychological abuse.

Continue
http://www.mysuburbanlife.com/2014/08/04/roskam-fighting-human-trafficking-in-the-foster-care-system/a3lo5op/?page=1

Kevin M. Ryan: New Study Reveals Vulnerability of Homeless Youth to Trafficking

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kevin-m-ryan/homeless-youth-sex-trafficking_b_3321193.html

Source: The Huffington Post

Kevin M. Ryan

President and CEO, Covenant House

05/24/2013 9:44 am

Today we are releasing the findings from one of the largest human trafficking studies among homeless youth in New York history, and the news is numbing. In interviews with almost 200 randomly selected homeless youth over the last year, researchers at Covenant House and Fordham University found that almost half -- 48% in total -- of those who engaged in commercial sexual activity said they did it because they did not have a place to stay.

Almost one out of every four homeless young people we interviewed were at some point in their lives either victims of trafficking or had engaged in survival sex (trading sex acts to meet basic needs like food or shelter). Kids who had a history of childhood sexual abuse, who lacked a caring, supportive adult in their life, and who had no means to earn an income were particularly vulnerable to such exploitation. Since Covenant House offers shelter and care to more than 3,000 youth in New York City each year, it is possible that we work with as many as 700 youth annually who have experienced trafficking or survival sex.

Imagine that - in two buildings in midtown Manhattan, we may see as many as 700 kids every year who have been sexually exploited, trafficked or forced to exchange sex for shelter. That is disgraceful, and a wake up call to all of us, including all of us at Covenant House, that we have to be prepared to respond to the needs of victims by making sure we do everything in our power to help them leave the streets safely and permanently.

Solid figures have been particularly hard to come by in growing discussions of human trafficking, in part because many survivors don't like to talk about having been exploited. Working with the Applied Developmental Psychology Department at Fordham, researchers at Covenant House developed a set of interview questions to make it easier to find trafficking victims, and we were surprised and dismayed by the extent of exploitation the young people who participated in the interviews had suffered.

We knew when the research team launched its study of human trafficking among our kids, that those who didn't have a safe place to sleep at night were particularly vulnerable to being exploited, pimped out, even enslaved, but the incidence is more common than I had anticipated. For advocates working with homeless youth across the United States, the study is a thunder clap - the fight against human trafficking is ours.

The kids told researchers stories that are hard to comprehend, but they were consistent over time. Those who had been compelled into sex trafficking reported being gang raped, intimidated, and beaten up. Four were kidnapped before being forced into prostitution, and several described repeated and unsuccessful attempts at escape. Their traffickers were often family members, friends of family, or boyfriends who at first pretended to love and care for them. How do you ever learn to trust again, after such experiences?

We learned that more than 40 percent of the young people in the study were over 18 when they first traded sex for something of value like food and shelter, either through trafficking or survival sex. This is an older starting age than earlier studies‎ have shown - many trafficked youth report having started selling sex at age 12 or 14. According to the research team, the sample of kids represented in today's study may have started later because many didn't experience enduring homelessness until they were over 18, when they left foster care, for example, or were kicked out of their homes for being gay. The findings starkly underline the correlation between youth homelessness, exploitation and commercial sexual activity.

We have to remember that older adolescents who have been trafficked have the same needs for help, love, and guidance, as younger ones do. The older trafficked kids are often suffering from more entrenched problems and educational deficits, yet some in the public tend to look at them as guilty criminals, rather than as young people who have grown up with constant trauma who were left to survive on the streets.

It is clear to me that if we want to reduce the number of young people who are trafficked -- and who doesn't? -- we need to attack the problems of supply and demand. Too many of us focus on just the demand side of this nightmare -- fighting important battles to detect, arrest, prosecute and punish those pimps, johns, gangs and cartels who buy and sell young bodies, while deterring others who may do so next.

The truth is we will never arrest our way out of this. We cannot effectively end the exploitation of young people if we do not focus on the root causes and conditions of their vulnerability. And that means we have to ensure stable housing for many more kids than we currently do, so they won't have to make impossible choices between shelter and dignity, between shelter and innocence, between shelter and safety.

All across the nation, both at the federal, state and local levels, government is withdrawing aid to homeless youth while in some instances establishing new anti-trafficking programs or heralding new safe houses for trafficking survivors. It makes no sense for public leaders in New York and elsewhere to increase aid to shelter human trafficking victims while simultaneously slashing support for homeless youth shelters. These are the same kids!

The nation's expanding state and federal anti-trafficking coalitions must build agendas that go beyond a criminal justice response for traffickers; we need robust prevention initiatives. We need to keep kids safe from sexual abuse, promote firm family ties, and ensure kids are equipped, through housing, education and job training, to live safely and independently when they are old enough.

Of course every young person deserves a future of opportunity, one free from sexual exploitation. But keeping them safe from the predators who lurk in the darkest corners of society is going to require that we get real about the causes of human trafficking and start building more bridges from homelessness to hope.

Follow Kevin M. Ryan on Twitter: www.twitter.com/covhouseprez

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• Human trafficking hits closer to home than you might think
• 'Hazel's law' protects state's foster youth

LA Teen Prostitutes Come From Foster Homes A Majority Of The Time, County Says (VIDEO)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/28/la-teen-prostitutes-foster-homes-county-video_n_2207778.html?utm_hp_ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false 

Source: The Huffington Post

The Huffington Post  |  By Kathleen Miles 
Posted: 11/28/2012 7:43 pm EST Updated: 11/29/2012 4:43 pm EST

(VIDEO)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=tJlkLFSmbb4

The majority of young people arrested on prostitution charges in LA County come from the county's own foster care system, according to county officials.

Even more shocking, pimps use child sex workers to recruit fellow foster care children who are currently living in shelters and foster homes.

This is according to Supervisor Michael Antonovich, who introduced a motion to establish a task force to investigate sex trafficking in the foster care system. The LA County Board of Supervisors passed the motion Tuesday.

Antonovich's motion reports that the average age of entry into prostitution is 12 years old and that the average life expectancy following entry is seven years, according to the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI.

Earlier this month, Californians overwhelmingly voted to support Proposition 35, or the Californians Against Sexual Exploitation Act. The proposition strengthens penalties against human traffickers and decriminalizes prostitution for minors. But decriminalization means a shift of responsibility towards the county Department of Children and Family Services -- a responsibility that the department says it's unprepared to handle.

The department cannot prevent children from running away, and many young sex workers fear they will be punished by their pimps if they don't run away from their homes, the Los Angeles Times reports.

The video above tells the stories of young girls who fell victim to sex trafficking in LA and exposes the kind of tactics the pimps use. The video was released over the summer by LA County Supervisor Don Knabe as a part of a county-wide anti-child sex trafficking campaign.

The task force examining foster care victims will report back with recommendations in six months.

Girls, Human Trafficking, And Modern Slavery In America | ThinkProgress

Source: ThinkProgress

On the 150th anniversary of when President Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which set the date for the freedom of more than 3 million enslaved Americans, President Obama called for the end of modern day slavery. The president’s historical speech delivered at the Clinton Global Initiative, called for major policy changes, at home and abroad, to combat the enslavement of millions of women, men and children.

Many of the slaves today are girls. Born in America. Hidden in plain view.

For the full story by Malika Saada Saar, the executive director of Rights4Girls, a U.S. based human rights organization for young women and girls, go to:

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/10/06/971401/girls-human-trafficking-and-modern-slavery-in-america/?mobile=nc

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Schools work to raise awareness of human sex trafficking - Schools - MiamiHerald.com

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/07/03/2881902/schools-work-to-raise-awareness.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/07/03/2881902/schools-work-to-raise-awareness.html#storylink=cpy

Source: MiamiHerald.com

Principals were briefed on the issue before summer break, and the district is working on a campaign to educate students, too .

MORE INFORMATION

WHERE TO CALL

If you suspect a child is being abused or trafficked, call:

• Florida Abuse Hotline at 1-800-96-ABUSE

• Human Trafficking Resource Center hotline at 1-888-373-7888

• Department of Homeland Security hotline at 1-866-DHS-2ICE

BY LAURA ISENSEE

LISENSEE@MIAMIHERALD.COM

The Miami-Dade school district, together with federal agencies, law enforcement and social service groups, is working to raise awareness of human sex trafficking in an effort to prevent school-age kids from being lured into prostitution.

A new awareness campaign aims to train teachers and administrators on the warning signs. Principals were briefed on the issue before summer break, and the district is working on a campaign to educate students, too .

“It is our responsibility to be as smart and aware on social issues as we are with curriculum. It’s part of our job, and it should be part of our forefront to do whatever we can do to make sure kids are safe,” said Miami-Dade School Board Vice Chairman Lawrence Feldman, who proposed the new campaign.

He said the idea stems from what he’s seen as a 35-year veteran of Miami-Dade County Public Schools. But last week’s arrest of four Miami-Dade men accused of recruiting foster children from a group home to work at a Homestead brothel has underscored its importance. Some days, the foster girls would arrive at school, text or call their pimps to pick them up and ditch class for the brothel.

“This is just a the tip of the iceberg. It’s an indicator of what’s going on,” said Carmen Pino, an assistant special agent in charge of the human-trafficking division with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He did not work on the Homestead case, which is being prosecuted by the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office.

Pino said ongoing cases and other information indicate that traffickers are focusing their attention on high school students, students in foster care and other vulnerable children.

Federal authorities say pimps manipulate other students to act as their recruiters on school grounds.

“A 20-odd-year-old person can’t have ready access to a high school or middle school or junior high, but if they recruit some boys to recruit on their behalf by offering them money or drugs, this is some of the evidence we’re starting to see,” Pino said. “The traffickers are having their little runners work for them.”

Unexplained absences and difficulty in attending school on a regular basis are some of the warning signs a child might be a victim of human trafficking, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

“When a child doesn’t show up, and we send out a Connect Ed message, and the teacher sends out a letter, and we don’t hear from a child for two or three days, and we haven’t heard from a parent that the child is sick at home, I think it behooves us as administrators and teachers to take the next step — to find out why,” Feldman said.

When a student is absent, school employees try several ways to find out why: through Connect Ed messages, parent contact, home visits and parent conferences, said John Schuster, district spokesman.

The Miami-Dade School Board approved the new awareness campaign in May. Miami-Dade principals and assistant principals received a briefing on human trafficking, including what signs to watch for and whom to call. The district put general information on its website for teachers and parents. Feldman said he expects the program to be an ongoing effort.

The campaign involves several partners, including Kristi House, a Miami home that supports abuse victims; ICE; the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and the South Florida Human Trafficking Task Force, which includes law enforcement agencies, safety groups and nonprofits from all over South Florida. Kristi House helped put together information for principals and is expected to help create more professional development for school employees. The task force is also working on a community presentation, said Barbara Martinez, a federal prosecutor and coordinator for the task force.

Martinez said Florida is a hub of human trafficking of all kinds, including adults and workers. Every year, her office handles 8-12 such cases, most of them involving the domestic sex trafficking of minors.

In a 2011 Broward case, two teenage cousins ditched plans to party at a teen club and headed instead with two men to the “Boom Boom Room” in Oakland Park.

One of the girls, 14, was familiar with the spot, so her 16-year-old cousin agreed to go. At the house-turned-club, the older teen saw two other girls from school. There was dancing and alcohol, but it was not a regular teenage bash.

It was a brothel, federal prosecutors say. That night in April 2011, the 16-year-old girl had sex with three men, danced for tips and got paid $240 before she left at dawn.

Martinez said the traffickers target vulnerable children, including those in foster care, runaways and kids who are still living with their parents or have only left home for a short time — a new trend that has emerged over the past few years.

“People think of [human trafficking] as an international problem,” Martinez said. “It’s like anything else, once you open your eyes to it, it’s everywhere.”

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/07/03/2881902/schools-work-to-raise-awareness.html#storylink=cpy

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• CharitySub.org Picks July to Fund Human Trafficking Awareness in US Chooses 3 Groups to Benefit Helps Individuals Fund Causes including Stop Child Trafficking Now (prweb.com)

No shock about foster kids and sex traffickers - Fred Grimm - MiamiHerald.com

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/07/02/2879124/no-shock-about-foster-kids-and.html

Source:  MiamiHerald.com

Related Content

• Four charged with running foster child prostitution ring
• Foster kids would leave for school, detour to brothel
• Girl at another Florida foster home also lured into prostitution

BY FRED GRIMM

FGRIMM@MIAMIHERALD.COM

Four out of six kids. From a single foster care home. Four of them, lured into prostitution. Naïve me, but I was shocked.

It seemed beyond my imagination that four girls, supposedly in school, could instead be detoured into the grasp of Homestead pimps, for months, without anyone noticing. Kids, our kids, wards of our state government, spent their school days turning $100 tricks.

When a child advocate told the Herald’s Carol Marbin Miller last week that the case demonstrated an “extreme lack of supervision of these girls,” it seemed beyond understatement. But when I contacted experts in sex trafficking Monday, nobody was much shocked. They said foster kids often suffer the characteristics that make them vulnerable to exploitation.

Jill Levenson of Lynn University, an expert in sex crimes and a former child protection social worker, spoke of how often foster kids come from brutal family situations, from drugged out parents or child sexual abuse. Needy, troubled, difficult kids, with low self esteem. Desperate for attention. Wanting someone to take care of them. Then comes the pimps, showering them with attention. “Making them feel really special,” Levenson said.

Joan Reid of the Department of Rehabilitation and Mental Health Counseling at the University of South Florida said much the same thing, via email. And added, chillingly, “Girls in foster care are endangered due to the increased demand of buyers of sex [johns] for fresh, younger looking girls.”

After a similar case in Chicago in 2008, group homes were dubbed “magnets for pimps.” You’d think, given the vulnerabilities of their clients, that operators of foster homes would be particularly vigilant. Nola Brantley, founder and director of a California-based operation dedicated to rescuing children caught up in prostitution, talked about the stunning lack of awareness she has discovered among foster care providers.

Another theme emerging from the interviews echoed the problem Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernández Rundle discussed last week after the foster kid pimp ring was busted. Investigators must first break that strange, confounding bond the girls maintain with their pimps, often refusing to testify against the men who’ve beaten them, prostituted them and taken most of the money they earned.

This case had another familiar characteristic. One of the four girls in the Miami-Dade group home had recruited the others. Joan Reid warned that, “A pimp/trafficker will often use ‘his girls’ to recruit new girls, so placing previously trafficked girls, who have not had time to heal and psychologically recover, into group homes with other children puts the other children at risk.”

The Florida Legislature passed a law last spring that would do just that, create separate “safe harbors” for sexually exploited children, with training for police, with special treatment and facilities for kids who were once simply flung into the criminal justice system.

The new law goes into effect Jan. ,1 but with a caveat all too familiar to Florida’s child advocates. “To the extent funds are available.”

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/07/02/2879124/no-shock-about-foster-kids-and.html#storylink=cpy

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Human Trafficking A Problem Within U.S. Borders : NPR

Image via Wikipedia

Human Trafficking A Problem Within U.S. Borders

May 13, 2010

TELL ME MORE

Listen to the Story[TRAFFICKING MONITOR: Click on URL at end to listen]
[13 min 32 sec]

Web Resources
Huffington Post article on human trafficking
The Rebecca Project for Human Rights
FAIR Fund

May 13, 2010

It is estimated that 100,000 to 300,000 children living in the United States are at risk for commercial sexual exploitation. Host Allison Keyes discusses the issue with Malika Saada Saar, co-founder of The Rebecca Project for Human Rights -- a national organization that supports those vulnerable to domestic human trafficking. She is joined by Asia, a survivor of sex trafficking and an advocate for the FAIR Fund.

Copyright © 2010 National Public Radio®. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.

ALLISON KEYES, host:

I'm Allison Keyes, and this is TELL ME MORE, from NPR News. Michel Martin is away.

Coming up, fabulous classical violinist Regina Carter tells us what's playing in her ear.

But, first, when we hear of child sex trafficking, many of us think of it as something horrible that happens elsewhere in distant nations. But it's not. This month, several human rights organizations in this country met with congressmen to raise awareness about domestic sex trafficking.

Joining us today to talk about the issue are Malika Saada Saar, cofounder of The Rebecca Project for Human Rights, a national organization that supports vulnerable families. She helped organize the briefing in Washington.

Also joining us is a survivor of sex trafficking. We won't reveal her full name to protect her identity. So for the sake of this conversation, we'll call her by her first name, Asia. Asia is also an advocate for the FAIR Fund, an organization focusing on preventing human trafficking. Before we get started, I want to warn parents that much of this discussion will be inappropriate for young ears.

Thanks, ladies, for coming. I appreciate it.

Malika, tell me, who's at risk in the U.S. and why?

Ms. MALIKA SAADA SAAR (Cofounder, Rebecca Project for Human Rights): We know that between 100 to 300,000 children every year are at risk for being sexually exploited. Most of these children are girls, and most of them are between the ages of 11 to 14. Part of what's happened is that the Internet has really fueled an uptick in the trafficking of children, and especially children here in the U.S. So, venues, especially the venue of Craigslist, is really evolving as almost a virtual slave market in which children are bought and sold over the Internet.

What we are seeing is really the unfortunate nexus of children who are neglected, abused, alone, who are preyed upon by pimps. And then the use of the Internet is taken advantage of by these pimps and traffickers. And entities like Craigslist, in their sex ads, allow these children to be bought and sold over the Internet.

So whereas before, individuals might not buy children off the streets because they were afraid of being caught by the police, because of the discretion and the privacy that the Internet allows for - and especially Craigslist - these individuals, these predators, these child abusers can now, at their desk, in the confines of their own home, buy a child off of Craigslist.

KEYES: When you say at risk, what exactly do you mean by that? I mean, just walking down the street? Or do you mean that these young women are being targeted?

Ms. SAAR: All of it. Part of the narrative is that you have girls who are running away from homes that are already abusive, where there's physical and sexual abuse. Or there are girls running away from abusive foster care placements. And these pimps are predators, and they know how to find that girl who looks lost and who looks alone.

So you hear many girls talk about running away from an abusive home, being at a bus station trying to get away and being lured by a pimp who doesn't come across as a pimp, who comes across as a caring man who wants to take care of her.

There are also stories of these individuals who are pimps, who are traffickers, who got to runaway youth shelters and try to prey on the girls at these runaway youth shelters. And then there are also the stories of girls being kidnapped and then...

KEYES: Right off the street.

Ms. SAAR: Right off the street, kidnapped by pimps, by traffickers and then sold through Craigslist or other venues.

One girl that we have worked with was talking about her own journey, and she said that she was coming from an abusive home. She was lured into a car by a man she thought just cared about her who was a pimp. He kidnapped her, kept her at his home, and she started to call his home daddy daycare because of the number of girls who were in the home, who were there to be sold for sex.

KEYES: Asia, can you share your story with us?

ASIA: Yes. Basically, when I first met the guy who would become my pimp, I was actually all the way in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. And like Malika stated, I was lost. I lived with my grandmother until I turned 16. And I just started staying back and forth with my siblings. And I just felt like no one cared. It was like - I had gotten my GED. I didn't finish school because I felt like I had no support for college admissions and all that kind of stuff.

And this guy just, like, it was like he knew, like, what he was doing. He stopped me. He bought me something to eat. I hadn't eaten all day. And he kind of, like, told me what he did. He told me he was a pimp within, like, two hours of meeting him. But, like, my grandmother kind of sheltered me and I thought, like, a pimp had, like, a big fur coat with a hat and a cane. And so I'm, like, well, it must be different.

KEYES: So, he didn't look like...

ASIA: No, he didn't look like it. He had, like, I don't even remember what type of car, but it was like nothing special. Just...

KEYES: And he just pulled up next to you as you were walking down the street.

ASIA: Just pulled right up. Like he just knew. But he did use, like, I think some kind of tactic. He was, like, hey, Tiffany. And I'm, like, my name isn't Tiffany. And he was, like, oh, you look like somebody named Tiffany. Like, that was his way of, like, luring me in.

And, like, the next day, like, I was basically working for him. He had another girl who was, like, older than me. She maybe was 27. He was 21. And he was just, like, she's going to be your mentor. And, like, I actually worked for him in Milwaukee. And I saw my family once more. And, like, I didn't tell them what was going on. They thought I was just, like, hanging out with a guy or something.

And he took me to Schaumburg, and I continued to work for him. And, like, when I was on my cycle, my monthly cycle, like, I had to put a sponge in me and continue to have sex. I was posted up on Craigslist every day. I ate once a day. And then, like, he would leave me and the girl, like, in Schaumburg and he went back to Milwaukee.

And another pimp was, like, contacting me through Craigslist. And after, like, after being with him for a week, I couldn't go back home. Like, I've already, like, messed up and went this far in. So how about go to the next person? He seems nicer. He was calling me, offered to bring me to the nation's capital. He wired me money to the Greyhound in downtown Chicago to actually pay for the cab ride, because there was a Western Union and a bus ride all the way to - the Greyhound bus, like, Union Station.

KEYES: Asia, did he come off to you like he was going to protect you? He was -he just...

ASIA: Yeah.

KEYES: ...offered to care for you?

ASIA: He made it seem like a business, or like a partnership. I was told that it would be like a nine-to-five job. That was his exact words. He was going to take care of me. He might end up marrying me one day - just all these things to make it sound good. And it was stuff that just made me, it made me want to follow through with it because I felt like I never had someone to want to be there with me and for me.

KEYES: So, how long did you live this life?

ASIA: Only for a month, and it drastically changed me, like, that fast. When I got to D.C., I actually found out that I had pelvic inflammatory disease from -part of the sponge didn't come out of me, and it had expanded. And I had two STDs. And actually got arrested in a sting, so I have a criminal record now, which I'm probably going to work on getting it expunged. And it's just like the trauma afterwards.

I have to see a therapist. I'm paranoid sometimes on the train. I don't know if somebody is out to get me. It's hard to interact with society. It's like I have to relearn how to deal with people. And it's hard to just talk to people. It's hard to open up.

KEYES: Malika, what happens to the pimps that attack these children? I mean, when the police come, do they go to jail, as well, or is it just the girls?

Ms. SAAR: It's usually the girls. When you look at the number of girls who are behind bars right now, most of them are there for prostitution. Very, very rarely do the pimps get put behind bars. And even more rarely are the individuals who buy the girls put behind bars. What's hard to explain here is that we have the laws to put these individuals behind bars.

We can charge them with statutory rape, child abuse, child endangerment and trafficking. Unfortunately, there is rarely the political will to prosecute both the pimp and the so-called john for their acts of child abuse.

KEYES: If you're just joining us, I'm Allison Keyes and this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News.

We are speaking to Malika Saada Saar, co-founder and president of the Rebecca Project for Human Rights. We're also joined by Asia, a survivor of sex trafficking.

So, you were just explaining that there are laws about this, but the pimps and predators aren't going to jail. How is that possible?

Ms. SAAR: Because I don't think these girls are perceived as victims. If the girls were perceived as victims, then this would be considered a crime. Instead it's the girls who are criminalized for prostitution. If you open up the newspapers to see how the girl is described, she's 16 year olds described as a hooker or a child prostitute.

Now, if that same girl were in India or Thailand, we would describe her as a victim of child abuse, as a victim of rape. But for some reason that same girl who has been raped and coerced is described as a whore, as a hooker, as opposed to a victim.

KEYES: Asia, let me ask you were saying that you were arrested. You have a criminal record now. When the police came, were you able to ask for help? Did you say to them that you were in trouble?

ASIA: I didn't ask for help. I felt overwhelmed. It was like five male cops pointing guns at me, and basically they called me a little whore and I'm just letting him use me. Like, they made me feel bad. So, like, I didn't feel like I could tell them anything, even if I wanted to. But, like, I was stuck with a record.

KEYES: Wow. Asia, what kind of advice do you have for other girls that might be walking down the street and some guy pulls up in a car next to them?

ASIA: It's not safe to get in a car with somebody you don't know, because you might not come back home. It might not be physical first, it can be, like, mental. But, like, when I was young, I used to get in cars with guys, older guys, I thought it was cute. I thought they liked me. And, like, my sisters would ask me, am I crazy? But I just thought they were jealous. But it's, like, this time, like, I never ended up back at home. Just don't get in the car with someone you don't know. Don't talk to strangers, something that's been told to us as children.

KEYES: Right. Malika, once a victim is able to escape from this situation, assuming she's able to do so, what's the first thing she should do?

Ms. SAAR: I wish I could say to that victim that the first thing you should do is try to find help and help will be given to you. Unfortunately, I cannot maintain that promise. We have less than 50 beds for them in the entire country. There are no serious efforts to create safe haven programs for girls who have been trafficked. And while we have those safe haven programs abroad and fund those safe haven programs abroad, we do not have the same effort here in the U.S.

And so even if you have a judge who is well meaning and well intended and wants to help that girl, does not see the girl as a criminal, but as a victim of rape and child abuse. The judge has almost nowhere to put that child. We do not have a thoughtful, deliberate comprehensive response to girls who are being trafficked, other than to put them behind bars.

KEYES: Malika Saada Saar is the president and co-founder of the Rebecca Project for Human Rights, a national organization that advocates for vulnerable families. We were also joined by Asia, a survivor of sex trafficking. They were kind enough to join us from our studios in Washington.

Thank you ladies, very much.

Ms. SAAR: Thank you.

ASIA: Thank you.

KEYES: By the way, we reached out to Craigslist to see if they wanted to respond to the concerns raised by Malika Saada Saar. CEO Jim Buckmaster recently wrote on The Huffington Post in response to critics that, quote, "any ad on our site and facilitation of such an unspeakable crime is completely unacceptable and we'll continue to work tirelessly with law enforcement to ensure that any such victim receives the assistance they deserve and that anyone committing such a crime is imprisoned."

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Human Trafficking A Problem Within U.S. Borders : NPR

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